22nd Annual Arts Brunch Honoring Kathryn Meisle MFA ’85

The New York Carolina Club, UNC Department of Dramatic Art, UNC Department of Music, Carolina Performing Arts and the UNC General Alumni Association cordially invite you to attend the 22nd Annual Brunch to Celebrate the Arts at Carolina.

This year’s recipient of the John L. Haber (“Habey”) Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts will be actress Kathryn Meisle MFA ’85. William Ivey Long ’69, celebrated six-time Tony Award winning costume designer and 2004 Habey recipient will be Special Guest Emcee. He will be introduced by the incomparable Julie Halston (singer-actress-comedianne-vocal artist). Also participating in the program will be Michael Cumpsty ’82, MFA ’85 (2006 Habey), Reverend Susan Sparks ’84 (2018 Habey), Playmaker Rep Artistic Director Vivienne Benesch and GAA President Doug Dibbert ’70 among others.

Kathryn Meisle MFA ’85 has just completed a one-year run in the multiple Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Award-winning Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – and she has just embarked to London to join the West End original company of the show for the next fourteen months. The producers are graciously releasing Kathryn to return to New York for 48 hours to be honored at the 22nd Annual Brunch. Kathryn has also appeared in nine other Broadway productions, including Bradley Cooper’s The Elephant Man (in which she also appeared on London’s West End), The Glass Menagerie (understudying Sally Field), Outside Mullingar, A Touch of the Poet, The Constant Wife, Tartuffe (Tony Award nomination, Calloway Award), London Assurance, The Rehearsal and Racing Demon (Lincoln Center Theater).

Kathryn was born in Appleton, Wisconsin and her family moved various places in Wisconsin and Minnesota until one summer when the family of six relocated to Maine, where her actor dad William Meisle founded The Theatre at Monmouth, where her theatrical career began at the age of nine. She played various sprites, fairies and maids (Peaseblossom in Midsummer Night’s Dream was her first professional speaking role). She attended Waldorf School in New Hampshire, where she spent several summers in her teens with her dad at American Stage Festival.

Kathryn attended Smith College in Massachusetts, which included a semester at The National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Center in Waterford, Connecticut (in her words, “a magical boot camp where we studied dance, voice, design, stage combat and playwriting… you name it!”). She wasn’t really considering graduate school for financial reasons, but Len Berkman, theatre department chair at Smith, nominated her to take part in URTA auditions in NYC, where she was offered a scholarship UNC’s Graduate Acting Program. Ironically, through Kathryn’s connections at Carolina, her dad received the opportunity to perform in several Playmaker productions at that time.

Off Broadway, Kathryn’s credits include Romeo and Juliet (CSC), Women Beware Women at Redbull (Calloway Award), Top Secret, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Living Out (NYTW), Old Money (LCT), Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, As You Like It (Drama Desk nomination) and Othello (NYSF/Delacorte). More recent regional theatre credits include Macbeth (ETC), The May Queen (Geva), Cymbeline (Yale Rep), Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre, DC), Clybourne Park, The Real Thing, Three Sisters (The Guthrie), A Flea in Her Ear (Williamstown), Leaving by Vaclav Havel (Wilma), Creditors (La Jolla), Arkadina in The Seagull and Jacques in As You Like It (OSF).

Kathryn’s film credits include The Greatest Showman, Four, Bereavement, You’ve Got Mail, The Shaft and Rosewood. Her extensive appearances on episodic television include “Body of Proof,” “The Closer,” “Bones,” “The Unusuals,” “Law and Order SVU,” “Lie to Me,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Damages,” “New Amsterdam,” “Brothers and Sisters” and “Without a Trace.”